Rare mode

Rare mode, or formally, cbreak mode is a line discipline in Unix, between raw mode and cooked mode. Unlike cooked mode it works with single characters at a time, rather than wait for a whole line and then feed that all in at once, but unlike raw mode, keystrokes like abort (usually 'control-C') are still processed by the terminal and will interrupt the program.

This article (or an earlier version of it) contains material from FOLDOC, used with permission.